Chapter Text
Oh no. He’s here, he’s actually here, this is so bad…
Wait. Why is he here? He never puts himself out in front for the dirty work, that’s what his money and his minions are for!
“Please tell me this is a very bad joke.”
Jin Ling blinked, thoughts derailed. Because Wei Wuxian sounded…
“Fifteen hundred years. Cultivation is just a story now! The sects aren’t even a footnote in the records!” Wei Wuxian threw his hands in the air. “All that, and you’re telling me that ridiculous title is still following me around?!”
Jin Ling blinked. Wen Yuan had been emphatic that Yiling Laozu was the name they’d given Wei Wuxian, back when everyone thought he was an ice mummy. Was he actually saying…
Jin Guangshan chuckled. He probably meant it to be all patrician and indulgent, but to Jin Ling it just sounded mocking. “What you call yourself does not matter. Yiling Laozu is the name the world knows you by. And you are quite famous.”
There was something weird about how he said that. Almost… bitter? Which didn’t make sense, but then again none of this made any sense anyway!
Between the fall and the monster… just a minute ago, he’d been so wobbly that it was amazing he’d still been on his feet. Now…
Outrage flooded in, pushing the shakes and the fear off to the side, and Jin Ling planted himself in front of his friends, glaring at his grandfather. “Have you gone crazy?” he demanded. “You send a bunch of thugs and criminals to kidnap us, and now you think you can just drag us off and nobody’s going to say anything?”
Actually, he probably did think that. It wasn’t like stuff like that hadn’t happened before. Sure, no one talked about it, but it happened.
Except that there were easily a dozen cell phones pointed at them and recording right now, and at least half of them were probably livestreaming the whole thing. Even the best censors in the world wouldn’t be able to scrub this before hundreds of thousands of people saw it. And it wasn’t like Jin Guangshan was lacking in enemies who would love to take him down hard.
Seriously. Had he gone crazy? Because this was insane! What did he even expect to get out of this?
“That man is a valuable archaeological specimen and therefore he is the property of the National Administration of Cultural Heritage,” Jin Guangshan said dismissively, the corner of his lip curling slightly. “As it is clear that the security arrangements of Cloud Recesses University are inadequate, I will be taking him into custody.”
“You have got to be kidding!” Lan Jingyi shouted. “No one is going to buy that, not when your guys are the ones who kidnapped us in the first place!”
Now that curl of Jin Guangshan’s lip was a full-on sneer. “How is that any concern of mine?” he asked.
A chill went through Jin Ling with a physical shock, as if he’d fallen into icy water. Because… because…
Because Jin Guangshan would never say that.
His grandfather was a lot of things, many of which Jin Ling didn’t even like thinking about, but before anything else, Jin Guangshan was a politician. Dismissing the opinions of ordinary people? Sure, he’d think it. But say it out loud? In public?
Monsters were real. Ghosts were real. And that meant…
Swallowing, Jin Ling took an involuntary step back. “You’re not Jin Guangshan.”
The words came out shaking, not boldly accusatory the way he wanted. But he still said them.
A strong, gentle hand came to rest on his shoulder. “No, I think he’s not,” Wei Wuxian said, subtly pushing Jin Ling towards Lan Wangji as the cultivator stepped forward slightly.
Tilting his head to one side, Wei Wuxian studied those awful, empty eyes. “You haven’t been Jin Guangshan for quite some time, have you?” he said thoughtfully. Raising an eyebrow, he added, “Perhaps you’d like to speak in your own voice now? I’m sure you’re tired of limiting yourself to the mask of a puppet.”
Puppet?! Jin Ling almost yelped – only for it to freeze in his throat as Jin Guangshan’s face… changed.
Or, not exactly. It was still the face of Jin Ling’s grandfather, but… it was almost like his face was just a putty mask on someone else, because Jin Guangshan would never make that sort of expression, cold and disdainful and not making even the slightest effort to hide it.
“That fool should have known better than to touch something he couldn’t understand,” Jin Guangshan – no, the ghost said, a corner of Jin Guangshan’s upper lip curling dismissively, and even the voice was wrong, the timbre of Jin Guangshan’s voice but haughty and impatient.
Wei Wuxian didn’t even blink at the change. “Well then. Based on the stories, I would say you would be Hou Jing… but then, those stories aren’t quite right, are they?”
Jin Guangshan’s face twisted in sudden, alien fury. “You dare?! As if that empty-headed dog was ever more than a pretender! A worthless mundane fool who thought himself the equal of his betters!”
Wei Wuxian just chuckled. “Ah, so you were a cultivator! I wondered. Well, stories do get things mixed up.” He tapped his cheek thoughtfully. “So how long has it been since you slipped out of the seal? That must have taken some doing!”
Weird. He was talking to the… the ghost, but Wei Wuxian’s attention seemed to be as much on the soldiers behind him as on the bad guy himself…
The very nervous soldiers. Jin Ling had been too busy worrying about the really big guns to notice, but the soldiers looked at least as terrified as he felt!
Although he supposed… Giant monster, creepy ghost thing, avenging undead – at least Jin Ling had known stuff like that was possible before seeing it all in action. No wonder these guys were creeped out!
Which… might not be a good thing. Su Minshan and his jumpy trigger finger was part of what had started this whole mess. And these weren’t just security guys, they were soldiers and those were real guns. He didn’t think Wei Wuxian was up to catching hundreds of bullets all at once.
“Jin Ling.”
He started. Professor Lan’s voice was low and quiet, pitched to carry no farther than absolutely necessary.
“The seal is still mostly intact. For the ghost to have escaped, it must have a physical anchor of some kind, something that would have allowed it to be carried out of the seal and keeping it from being pulled back in. Jin Guangshan is likely carrying it.”
Jin Ling swallowed. “You think that’s how he got…?”
“It is possible.”
Great, just great. Jin Guangshan didn’t go for gaudy when it came to his clothes, he was too aware of the importance of appearing somber and frugal. So if he was carrying a cursed artifact or something, it would have to be small…
Oh. Augh, he was an idiot! “His ring,” Jin Ling muttered, trying to keep quiet so they wouldn’t break the fragile stalemate Wei Wuxian was holding for them. “Wen Yuan said he thought it was the Three Gorges Ring, from when they were building the dam – it’s from here, he’s always wearing it…”
He glanced at the faceoff again and gulped. Jin Guangshan’s face was set in a cold, dismissive sneer, utterly unlike the man’s preferred facade of patrician congeniality.
“Enough!” the ghost snapped. “I am not here to play your pointless games, Wei Wuxian! I am here to claim what I am owed!” He made a sharp gesture with his hand. “Seize them all!”
Erk.
A ripple of unease went through the soldiers, as they glanced at each other with wide eyes, before they started to advance. And then stopped, because Wei Wuxian shifted his position to stand squarely between the soldiers and the rest of their little group. And smiled.
Which. Well. He was a cultivator, he’d just taken out a giant monster, he wasn’t someone they could just shoot… and that was a really, really scary smile.
Especially when Lan Wangji stepped up to join him. The professor wasn’t smiling, he just stared at them with that expressionless look of stone, and obviously even soldiers hadn’t signed up to deal with that.
“Look, there’s no need for trouble,” one of the soldiers said after a moment. “But this is a restricted area and you entered without permission. So we do have to ask you to come with us…”
“Oh, come on!” Lan Jingyi said – although this time he stayed behind the two adults. “That’s BS and you know it! We didn’t ask to be here, we got tied up and dragged here in that stupid helicopter! By a bunch of criminals that that guy sicced on us! And now you’re going to act like it was our idea? He’s not even denying it was him!”
“Which should be proof enough that he’s not the guy you’re supposed to be taking orders from, even if he didn’t just admit it himself!” Jin Ling threw in. Because there was no way that Jin Guangshan wouldn’t have tried to claim plausible deniability, and instead he was acting like he had the right to do whatever he wanted, like some…
Well. Like some highborn lord in a period drama, actually.
Oh great, the soldiers were looking even more twitchy, white-rimmed eyes darting around like they were looking for a way out of this mess, and Wen Yuan hadn’t even added his two cents yet.
Wait. Where was Wen Yuan?
Stomach dropping, Jin Ling tried to look around without actually taking his eyes off the guards or giving away what he was doing – which was probably why it took him several heart-hammering seconds before a glimpse of white in the corner of his eye led him to his friend, who had slipped away while everyone’s attention was distracted to make his way over to the big tour bus that Jin Ling had completely forgotten about. He was standing mostly hidden by the corner of the bus, and it looked like he was maybe arguing with the driver?
Probably trying to get them to step on the gas and get out of here before things really blow. That was definitely a Wen Yuan thing to do.
Jin Ling just wished he could convince himself that it would do any good. But even if Wen Yuan convinced them, even if the bus leaving didn’t set everything off… this was a high-security area, there’d just be more guards on the other side of the dam, right? No way they’d have missed all this. But they’d have no idea what was going on. If the bus came tearing down the road in the wrong direction, they’d probably get the wrong idea.
Movement caught his eye; the soldiers were fanning out like they were trying to encircle their little group, and one of them was holding his gun like he might just shoot it anyway just because…
Jin Ling was stomping forward before he could think better of it, because he didn’t want to think better of it, he just looked that jerk straight in the eyes. “Are you serious?” he demanded. “Sure, go ahead, start shooting at a bunch of kidnapping victims with a whole bunch of people watching you and…”
“You little idiot!”
Jin Guangshan was older, and he liked his wine and his food and his indulgences. He wasn’t unhealthy or anything, but he definitely wasn’t exactly in shape, either. And… to be totally honest, Jin Ling had taken a guilty sort of comfort in that – knowing that if anything really bad happened, he could probably outrun the man if he had to.
Except that the ghost moved so fast. He didn’t even see Jin Guangshan move, he was over there and then suddenly there was a grip like iron on Jin Ling’s arm and ow…
“You little fool, you should know better than to interfere with your elders! Now stay out of the way…!”
And he was getting dragged away from the others and his feet were half off the ground, he couldn’t get any leverage…
Don’t just dangle like a baby cat!
Drawing his foot up, he kicked.
He was just wearing sneakers, not the sort of hard heavy boots that Nie Mingjue liked, and the angle was bad, he only managed to hit the side of the knee. But it was enough to make the ghost in his grandfather’s body stumble for a second, grip loosening.
Something glinted on Jin Guangshan’s hand. Acting as much on instinct as thought, Jin Ling reached over, grabbed, and dropped.
Auuugh I’m very sure fingers aren’t supposed to make that sort of noise!
Then the ghost shrieked, and the sound skipped straight past his ears to drag razor claws through his soul, because it was rage and hate and fury twisted far past anything even vaguely human. Jin Ling didn’t even feel himself hit the concrete, too busy desperately scrabbling to get some distance between him and that horrible sound, fingers buzzing like he’d gotten a static shock—
Then suddenly he was tucked under Wei Wuxian’s arm as the cultivator jumped back, away from Jin Guangshan and that furious scream and the growing sense of a strange pressure in the air, like a storm about to break.
“That was well done,” the cultivator chuckled. “Now we just need to survive the results!”
Wait. What did he mean, survive…?
Then the scream stopped.
And all hell broke loose.
Once, during his time traveling before starting his degree program, Lan Wangji had found himself in the midst of a hurricane. It had been his own foolishness, in part; growing up in the Cloud Recesses, his only real experience of such weather was through the news reports, generally filtered to prevent panic and rumors. He hadn’t truly appreciated what a storm warning could truly mean.
He vividly remembered the way the wind had made it difficult to stand, the rain hitting his face with the bruising force of hailstones, the storm surge that had nearly taken his feet out from under him as he’d struggled towards shelter, terrified and angry because the forecast said…!
It had been one of many experiences that had profoundly reshaped his youthful certainty that the world was a place that was orderly, rational, predictable.
The forces unleashed now brought that storm to mind – and in comparison, the leashed energies of the oracle bones had been a passing spring rain.
The resentment in the air wasn’t just visible, it bordered on physical. Hate and rage and fear and grief pulsed and pounded around him, bound into a matrix of not fair, not right, why why why why…!
And pain. So much pain.
He almost didn’t notice that the actual storm overhead had broken, despite the rain suddenly pouring down in torrents, until the world flashed white around him. The hairs stood up on his arms, not in atavistic reaction but in response to the actual charge in the air as one of the towering red-painted lifts nearby sparked. Residual electricity ran up and down the struts, the strange half-visible haze in the air tinting the blue-white arcs an eerie violet that brought to mind volcanic lightning.
Then something shifted, and the relentless pressure of the tumult eased as a few sharp notes brought a shimmering red barrier blazing to life around them.
“What is happening?” he asked, shifting to move closer to Wei Wuxian. He had to raise his voice just to hear himself over the rain and the spectral roar.
“Well…” He could hear the wry smile in Wei Wuxian’s voice as the man lowered his dizi. “That ring let the ghost separate part of himself from the array… but I think he left more of himself behind in it. And now that he’s so close to it again? I think the other part woke up. Along with everything else in the array.”
The array which had been drawing in resentful energy from throughout China for who knew how many years. Meaning…
Lan Wangji drew in a sharp, apprehensive breath. “The ghost is the core of an abyss.”
Wei Wuxian’s lip twitched ruefully. “So it appears.”
Lan Wangji made himself breathe through the building panic, centering himself in his own reactions to keep the roar of other in the air at bay as he adjusted his position so that Jin Ling and Lan Jingyi were safely sheltered between him and Wei Wuxian. He had lost track of Wen Yuan somewhere in the chaos—
A flicker of blue light, too steady to be lightning, caught his eye. Wen Yuan had positioned himself between the bus and the torrent of energy, and…
Oh. He was holding up one of the practice talismans that he’d been making. The light was unsteady and uneven; even as Lan Wangji watched, he saw the talisman crumble, overwhelmed by far more energy than it was ever meant to block. And then it was immediately replaced by another Wen Yuan pulled from his pocket, pale-faced but clearly determined to give the bystanders what protection he could, and Lan Wangji was so proud of him.
Children accounted for, he turned his focus back to the storm of building energy. “Can you calm the ghost?” he asked urgently.
“That could be tricky,” Wei Wuxian admitted. “He’s been soaking in the resentment drawn in by that array for a very long time.”
Which meant that the ghost might well have forgotten the desires that had driven it in the first place. Even if it hadn’t, whatever lay at the heart of the ghost’s resentment might well be something that the modern world was incapable of offering.
“Still,” Wei Wuxian mused, “we might as well try asking.” Lifting the dizi to his lips, he began to play again.
The reaction was immediate; the whirl of anger and energy began to whip this way and that, the churn growing chaotic as the song threaded through the tumult, curious and questioning—
“You dare!”
That was no longer Jin Guangshan’s voice in any form, crackling and reverberating with a thousand fragmented voices as he began stalking forward, moving as though the storm meant absolutely nothing.
“You dare play the hero and defend them? Know your place!”
“What the heck?!” Lan Jingyi yelped in protest, hands raised as if to protect his head, or maybe cover his ears against that terrifying voice. “Jin Ling got the ring! That was supposed to stop him, wasn’t it?”
Wei Wuxian didn’t pause his playing, eyes fixed on Jin Guangshan’s form. But he looked grimly unsurprised.
“A long-term possession may not be so easy to break,” Lan Wangji started—
Somewhere in the tumult was a strangled shout, as a wild-eyed soldier screamed and brought his gun around to bear. Reacting on instinct, Lan Wangji grabbed Wei Wuxian and the boys and dropped, bringing all of them down below the line of fire.
The spray of bullets tore through Jin Guangshan’s body with all the power of a high-powered military machine gun fired at close range. The blood was an eerily brilliant red in the strange light, and all Lan Wangji could do was keep everyone down and pray that Jin Ling hadn’t seen it.
Jin Guangshan’s body dropped gracelessly to the ground. And something snapped.
The air went perfectly, utterly still. Even the rain seemed to have stopped, leaving a silence that thundered louder than the screaming rage that preceded it. The very air in his lungs and pounding of his heart seemed muffled, a dulled thwom, thwom, thwom.
No. That wasn’t his heartbeat.
Forcing his head back up, Lan Wangji stared.
Overhead, the clouds were churning against each other, coiling inwards towards a central eye crackling with that strange violet-tinted lighting. And below, the waters of the reservoir swirled in response, forming a widening whirlpool that plunged down and down, perhaps to the very bottom of the reservoir.
And from the whirlpool, something rose to hover in the air.
The sword was ancient. The grip and scabbard had clearly decayed long ago, the hilt tarnished, and the blade corroded to almost nothing. It looked as if a single careless touch might make it crumble to rust and dust.
And it radiated black rage, pulsing hate and fury and seething resentment in waves that Lan Wangji could physically feel with the force of a hand closing on his throat.
“Well.” Wei Wuxian bounced back to his feet, eyeing the sword hovering over swirling water. “That’s one way to draw out the core of the abyss, I suppose.” He raised his dizi again – then cursed and dodged to the side, barely evading the lunge of Jin Guangshan’s corpse, eyes glazed and unseeing even as it whirled to attack again with a single-minded speed like nothing living.
(Still dressed in his pressed suit, tidy outside the gaping, bloody bullet holes, some detached corner of Lan Wangji’s mind noted with bemusem*nt. So much for that particular trope.)
Wei Wuxian evaded the second attack as well, his brow furrowed. His eyes were darting between Lan Wangji and the corpse, uncharacteristically hesitant, and Lan Wangji abruptly realized the man was weighing whether to remain close to defend them, or if he should try to draw the threat away instead.
About to call out, sudden movement over the water caught Lan Wangji’s eye.
He didn’t think – had no time for thought, not even the time to process what he was even doing with his conscious mind. Without a thought, his hand flew out, calling—
Blue-white steel gleaming in his hand, he struck the dark sword from the lake away before it could plunge into Wei Wuxian’s back.
Then he froze as his actions caught up with him, staring at the lambent blue gleam of the sword resting in his hand.
Wei Wuxian’s laugh was breathless, but the genuine delight was unmistakable. “I told you Bichen would suit you!”
So he had, and it was eerie how right it felt this time…
But Lan Wangji was also acutely aware of the sudden exhaustion dragging at his limbs. Whether it was the accumulated fatigue of so many crises in rapid succession or simply the effort of using a spiritual sword meant for a fully trained cultivator, he was down to the final dregs of his endurance. He could not block another strike.
You are a scholar – think!
“You,” he realized suddenly. “The ghost – it is focused on you.”
Yiling Laozu, it had said, when speaking with the voice and manner and mind of Jin Guangshan. But when speaking as itself… the ghost had called him Wei Wuxian.
“It knew you,” he breathed.
The ghost snarled. “And what good were you? What happened to your damned promise! You said you’d always serve me!”
For just a moment, Wei Wuxian went utterly still, grey eyes wide.
Then he exhaled, long and slow and resolute. “Lan Zhan. I have an idea.”
Lan Wangji nodded. “What do you need me to do?”
The cultivator’s lips quirked slightly. “Maybe the hardest thing of all,” he said. “Nothing.”
Then he tucked his dizi into his belt and walked away.
Lan Wangji choked. Wei Wuxian was walking towards Jin Guangshan’s corpse, which was preparing to lunge again, and the sword from the lake was returning for another attack and he wasn’t even looking at it—
Wei Wuxian asked him to do nothing.
The corpse leapt.
The sword slammed through flesh.
And Jin Guangshan’s body fell to the concrete, run through by ancient steel. Abruptly, the sense of screaming pressure… vanished.
It blocked the attack, Lan Wangji thought blankly.
It didn’t make any sense. The ghost possessing Jin Guangshan and the resentment of the ancient sword were one and the same. So why…
Wei Wuxian sighed, kneeling down next to the tangle of corpse and sword. “Some things really don’t change. You never did know how to admit to yourself that you cared, did you, Jiang Cheng?”
Reaching out, he rested his fingers on the hilt.
(Whirling impressions. Fragments of memory, of feeling. It had been so long, there was so little left.)
An empty room. An empty gate.
He’s not coming back.
Ungrateful wretch! He wouldn’t have dared leave if I had my core. I should have known better than to trust worthless promises!
I’ll show them. I don’t need him – don’t need any of them! I’ll rebuild Yunmeng Jiang bigger, better, stronger than before.
And then I’ll find him. I’ll make him regret ever even thinking of leaving!
Where is he where is he nothing but fools imitating his stupid tricks, how dare they! Tell me where he is – beat it out of you…!
A man in Jin gold, serious and solemn, talking about watch towers, the need for proper order, sects meddling in each other’s affairs.
Fine by me. Damn old Lan witch keeps asking about him, she’s probably hiding him in that stupid would-be temple. Hah, serves him right!
Sects bickering among themselves. An heir murdered and three lesser sects wiped out entirely in retaliation – not my problem, why should I care? All the more hunts for us!
Searing pain – poison, a stupid poison, if I had my core it wouldn’t even matter…! – and that same Jin, and now he’s smiling!
“I really must thank you. Recruiting him would have been preferable, but he was too loyal. If you hadn’t driven him out, our assassins wouldn’t have reached him.”
What?
Didn’t drive him out, he left! It’s his fault!
No. Their fault, they did it, it was them!
Death wasn’t cold. It burned.
traitors backstabbers kill them kill them ALL
Fire. Blood. Bodies in gold and white and green and even purple, the screaming rage of more and more dead rip shred them apart until I find him I will make him come back come back
not me not my fault never my fault
Something. Calling. River mountains flags his flags…!
(Within the whirl of fragmented furies, a frozen moment.)
Two men stood looking out over the shadowed valley.
“You’re sure the array will hold?”
The speaker’s companion shook his head, although not in negation. “I don’t know,” he admitted quietly, voice lowered even though they were too far from the nearby encampment for any eavesdropper to hear. “Wei-laoshi’s lure flags were never meant to be used like this. But there aren’t enough of us left to build and maintain a traditional seal. We’ll have to simply hope… and keep close watch.”
you dare you dare die!
The other huffed loudly. “Well. At least the fengshui here is good. The river will keep too much resentment from accumulating. We should be able to handle the rest, at least long enough to train new disciples so we can cleanse this properly.”
“Good.” The face that turned to the encampment on the slope of the valley was tired. Objectively, he was perhaps in his mid-forties, but every one of those years was etched into his features with fatigue and grief. “I’ll leave that in your hands, my friend.”
His companion snapped around to stare at him.. “Wait. What do you mean, Wen Fang?”
(Wei Wuxian started, the constant snarl of the mass of resentment that had been Jiang Cheng momentarily fading with his shock. Wen Fang? The same young A’Fang from Yiling?)
“Someone has to keep the great houses and lords from killing each other and starting this mess all over again. And apparently that’s me.” Under the dry humor was calm resolve. “And that means Wen Fang can’t exist anymore. The Sunshot Campaign, the Turmoils, this… The sects have done too much damage. No one will trust a cultivator to rule them.” He slanted a pointed look at his companion. “Which you also know perfectly well, Jin Rulan.”
(…Rulan? Shijie’s Rulan?)
YOU DARE YOU DARE not true not her son her son wouldn’t
The younger man winced. “…your point is taken,” he said reluctantly. “But my son will carry on my name. You…”
“I have cousins who survived. They can carry on the Wen name. But I must remain Yang Jian – just as you are Liu Zhixian,” Wen Fang – Yang Jian – said, before hesitating. “But… I think, perhaps, I might use Wén as a reign name. It’s not the same, but… an acknowledgement, of sorts.”
DIE die die die…
Exhaling slowly, Wei Wuxian slid out of the Empathy trance, anchoring himself back in the present world. Empathy was always disorienting, with the total immersion in the memories of another. And Jiang Cheng’s ghost was so old, fragmented by absorbing the resentment of so many other ghosts over the centuries. There was so little left…
Not even a self, really. Just an empty, inchoate loss buried beneath layer upon layer of rage and resentment and desperate denial—
A clear, familiar tone. And a familiar voice, physical and real, calling. “Wei Ying!”
Wei Wuxian opened his eyes and watched as the corroded remnant of Sandu disintegrated away into dust, the rage and resentment and suppressed regret fading at last.
It certainly hadn’t been in the time or manner Jiang Cheng had wanted… but in the end, Wei Wuxian had come back.
Already, he could feel the change in the resentful energy pooled in the lake; with the ghost at its core gone, the abyss had fragmented into many disjointed pieces, and the very air around them felt lighter as a result. Granted, that wouldn’t last; with this much energy in one place, it wouldn’t take very long at all for a new abyss to form. Cleansing it all would take a very long time.
Not to mention that, with the ancient flag formation disintegrating under the erosion of the dam, the myriad of resentful ghosts and beasts that had gathered over the centuries was going to start spreading out again. On the other hand, with the formation disintegrating, the disruption to the dragon lines would correct itself, and training new cultivators would get a lot easier. So… it all came out even, he supposed?
Huffing, Wei Wuxian opened his eyes and found four worried faces staring at him. Wen Yuan was crouching next to him, Wei Wuxian’s clarity bell chiming in his hand, while Lan Wangji knelt at his left, still clutching Bichen’s hilt with a white-knuckled grip. Lan Jingyi and Jin Ling were a few steps back, white-faced and shocky and looking thoroughly drenched, although the rain was already easing, the clouds overhead beginning to open up.
“He’s gone,” he assured them.
And then flopped back onto the wet pavement with a very loud sigh.
“Wei Ying?” Lan Wangji’s voice was not alarmed, but it was very clear that he was ready to be!
Wei Wuxian looked up at him. “Lan Zhan, can we go home now?” he asked plaintively.
There was a breath that sounded like it might be a bit of a chuckle. Then Lan Wangji looked at one of the guards standing. “I know the situation is irregular,” he said, in a weirdly polite way that made it clear that he might acknowledge that fact, but he wasn’t asking, either.
The fellow who seemed to be the leader of the guards now that Jin Guangshan was a rather messy corpse looked at them, looked at his fellow guards – all still rather white-faced and wild-eyed, clearly they had not signed up for this sort of thing! – and then buried his face in his hands. “You know what? I don’t even care,” he said wearily, his voice muffled. “There will be questions, I assume we know where to find you, just go.”
“Thank you,” Lan Wangji said gravely.
Wen Yuan sighed. “It’s going to be a really long walk, though.” He looked out to the east, beyond the dam, and Wei Wuxian suddenly realized that the sky was paling to the platinum-and-gold of pre-dawn. Had it really been that long? “At least it’s not raining anymore.”
“Hey, why did it stop raining?” Lan Jingyi asked suddenly. “Because, I mean, that whole storm was really weird, right? It wasn’t just me imagining things?”
Wei Wuxian had to laugh. Granted, most cultivators didn’t have much experience with it, but… “The weather gets strange when there’s a lot of resentful energy active in one place,” he explained, shamelessly accepting Lan Wangji’s offered hand to pull himself back upright before equally shamelessly draping himself on the man’s shoulder.
What? It had been a long night! He deserved some indulgence!
“Wait,” Jin Ling said suddenly. “Are you seriously telling us that there’s an actual physics reason for fights against big scary monsters to happen on a dark and stormy night?!”
Wei Wuxian blinked and scratched his nose. “Huh… yes? Although it’s probably more philosophy-physics than physics-physics…”
Someone cleared their throat. “Gentlemen.”
Startled, they looked up. An older woman was standing in the doorway of the tour bus, smiling wryly.
“Given that I think we all have had quite enough for one day… may we offer you a ride down to town?”
“Seriously, Lan Wangji, how could you do this to me?! I mean. Don’t get me wrong, the visuals are absolutely epic and the forums are going crazy… But this was not the plan!”
There was a soft sound suspiciously reminiscent of someone slapping Nie Huaisang on the back of the head, and then Nie Mingjue asked, “Are you safe for the time being?”
“I believe so,” Lan Wangji said. “Madam Bao arranged rooms for us at a hotel.”
The elderly woman had, in fact, booked an entire suite, as well as making the arrangements so that none of them had to interact with the staff in person. Eventually, of course, they would have to brave the public again, but she had been quite confident that so long as they remained in their suite, no one would know where they were.
He’d offered to repay her. Madam Bao had waved him off. “I’ve made plenty of investments that have paid very well over the years, I can afford to indulge a few strapping young fellows who happened to save my life – a life I’m rather fond of, you know. Now go pour those poor teenagers of yours into a bed before you have to carry them yourself!”
“And there is no one requiring immediate medical attention?” Lan Qiren’s voice was brusque, but Lan Wangji could hear the concern in the fact that the man had asked at all.
“Scrapes, bruises. Some pulled muscles.” All of which had quickly made themselves known once the crisis passed. Luckily the bus had been equipped with a good first aid kit, and once everyone had showered, they had managed to rig together some cold compresses using the towels and ice from the machine down the hall. “Nothing more urgent than that.”
Which seemed almost miraculous, given what they’d faced. But he supposed that they had also, frankly, largely been in situations where if they had not escaped unhurt, they would not have survived at all.
“Then I recommend you rest,” Wen Qing said briskly. “Xiao Xingchen, Song Lan and I should be there by tomorrow.”
“And me!” Nie Huaisang insisted. “Just, please, I’m begging you, if you somehow find yet another ancient monster to fight in the meantime, get a proper camera to record it, none of this handheld cellphone nonsense…”
Huffing internally, Lan Wangji hung up. He did recognize, intellectually, that Nie Huaisang’s frivolous fretting was a cover for residual panic and possibly even genuine concern, but he was not in a mood to indulge the man.
He allowed himself a moment to breathe and settle himself, and then returned to the main room of the suite. “Wen Qing and Xiao Xingchen will be here by tomorrow.”
Wen Yuan sighed explosively. “Oh, thank goodness! I wasn’t sure how we were going to get home.”
Given that none of them had been carrying a wallet and Meng Yao had taken their phones – meaning they had either fallen into the lake, been swallowed by the Xuanwu, or lost in the wreckage of the helicopter – it was a legitimate concern.
“And, um… what about talking to the police?” Lan Jingyi asked, looking a little green at the thought. “Because. You know. Some people died. Granted they weren’t exactly nice people, but…” He darted a quick look at Jin Ling, who was picking at the remnants of the breakfast that room service had delivered, and quickly shut his mouth.
“Given that we now have irrefutable evidence that Jin Guangshan was involved with Xue Yang and the theft of antiquities,” in the form of multiple live-streamed videos that had, according to Nie Huaisang, gone viral in seconds, and picked up worldwide, “I believe it will be the responsibility of the task force to handle any investigation.”
He did not envy them. A high-level party official embroiled in organized crime, antiquities smuggling and mobilizing military resources for the purposes of kidnapping several high-profile individuals was complicated enough without adding the problem of an ancient giant monster and possession by a ghost. There would be questions, undoubtedly – but he trusted Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan to handle them.
Wen Yuan drooped in relief, then turned his attention to Wei Wuxian, who was checking his qi to see if the storm of resentful energy had done any harm to the boy’s developing meridians. The cultivator was the one person in their group who did not have the glassy-eyed, shocky look of someone simultaneously too exhausted and too wound up to sleep.
Then again, Wei Wuxian had gotten onto the bus, claimed a seat next to Lan Wangji, and promptly curled up against Lan Wangji’s shoulder and napped the entire ride down to Sandouping. He hadn’t opened his eyes again until it was time to get off.
Granted, it was said that you could recognize a soldier by the ability to sleep anywhere, at any time, at the drop of a hat. But it was… gratifying, to know that Wei Wuxian considered Lan Wangji a safe harbor when he needed rest.
Although Lan Wangji suspected the long nap had also been a strategic decision in order to evade prying questions from an entire bus full of very curious and overstimulated tourists. If it were, he would not blame the man at all.
Even if part of him wished he could have observed Wei Wuxian’s reaction to the cooing of certain teenage girls who clearly had a taste for danmei.
There had also been many, many pictures taken. Some surreptitiously. Others very much not.
At least they had been respectful enough of Wei Wuxian’s space that they hadn’t disturbed the man’s sleep. And in the face of Wen Yuan and Lan Jingyi jointly pleading, everyone on the bus had agreed to grant them…
Well. Not privacy, exactly. That would have been impossible, given that the entire confrontation at the dam had been live-streamed from multiple devices. At least one intrepid videographer had apparently even caught their descent from the sky, linked together in a desperate daisy chain as Suibian fought to slow their fall.
According to Nie Huaisang, it was very dramatic. Lan Wangji was determined to never, ever watch that particular video. Living through it had been bad enough.
Still. The livestreams were unleashed on the world, a genie with no intention of returning to the bottle. But, at least as of Nie Huaisang’s most recent feed, none of the photos from the bus ride had been posted, and none of the tourists were talking, either.
It wouldn’t last, of course. But… it was enough for him to hope against hope that the reprieve would at least last long enough for them to return to the familiar sanctuary of Cloud Recesses before the storm broke.
Especially Jin Ling, who had been through far too much already. There was no way the boy would escape the fallout entirely, but he at least should have friendly faces around him when it came. Not the staring and gossip of bystanders. Even within their hotel suite… well. The normally hot-tempered boy was uncharacteristically quiet, and his picking at the remains of breakfast seemed more an excuse to avoid making eye contact with anyone than hunger.
He would have to talk to someone. He’d been betrayed and used by Meng Yao, someone he’d trusted, and at the bidding of the man who was his legal guardian and sole living relative. (Absent any other illegitimate children of Jin Guangshan, which was its own emotional minefield.) And both Meng Yao and Jin Guangshan had died violently last night. Small wonder Jin Ling had effectively hidden himself in Wei Wuxian’s shadow, even if he would probably bristle at the suggestion he was hiding.
For that matter, all of the boys would probably benefit from talking to someone, given that they’d been exposed to lethal violence in multiple manifestations over the course of the night. Lan Wangji would not be averse to it, himself.
Wei Wuxian finally nodded in satisfaction and released Wen Yuan’s wrist. Then he grinned and poked the boy’s nose. “Well, you didn’t do yourself any harm with all that, at least! But you should meditate before you sleep. That was a lot!” He looked pointedly at the other two. “In fact, you all should.”
Lan Jingyi groaned, but it was clear that his heart wasn’t in it. “As long as I get to sleep after…”
Rubbing his wrist, Wen Yuan glanced carefully up at Wei Wuxian. “Um. Can I ask something?”
Wei Wuxian huffed. “You’ve been asking things for months!” The laughter in his voice took any sting out of the words. “You can ask anything, I just might not answer.”
Wen Yuan wrinkled his nose and rolled his eyes at the familiar teasing, then forged onward. “When Jin Guangshan – or, well, I guess maybe it was the ghost – he called you Yiling Laozu…”
Wei Wuxian groaned dramatically, casting an imploring look at the ceiling. “I don’t know who came up with that ridiculous title. When I find out, I’m going to drag them back from the dead to give them a piece of my mind!”
Wen Yuan stared. “But… it really was your title. You actually are the original Yiling Laozu.”
Oh. Lan Wangji blinked. In the chaos, he’d completely missed the implications of that frustrated rant.
The cultivator made a face. “Only under protest!” he complained, before raising a finger. “And given what’s happened to all the other stories about people from the cultivation sects, I suspect your stories aren’t exactly accurate.”
“I dunno. Kinda seems like the bit about defeating a giant cursed monster was pretty close,” Lan Jingyi said.
Wei Wuxian opened his mouth, hesitated, then made a face. “Less defeated and more didn’t die,” he said, reluctantly amused. “And that happened years before the whole silly title!”
“Wait…” Lan Jingyi’s brow furrowed. “If it was years before… you’re not that old! Are you saying that the last time you fought that thing, you were our age?!”
Wei Wuxian gave him a dry look. “Believe me, it was not my idea,” he said wryly. “And I had much more training than you!”
“In the stories, you – or, well, Yiling Laozu was an immortal living at the source of the Yangtze, and before he became Emperor Wen, Yang Jian sought him out for secret knowledge in his quest to unify China,” Wen Yuan said.
Wei Wuxian blinked, then laughed sheepishly. “Ah. Well. Ironically, that’s a bit more accurate than your histories, even if the details are all muddled! He rubbed his nose. “I don’t think I’m immortal! But… I did help out the remnants of the Wen sect a bit. And it seems they used that to help seal the ghost from last night, and that was part of founding the Sui. So… sort of correct, I suppose?”
“Who was that ghost, anyway?” Lan Jingyi asked suddenly. “I mean, he was talking like he knew you…”
“Ah.” Wei Wuxian’s smile was slightly crooked. “He was a sect leader from my time. He… hmmm.” He pursed his lips, frowning slightly. “He lost someone, and wanted revenge. Then he was killed, but he was still angry, so… he kept going. And there were so many angry dead back then. It… hm. Snowballed, I think is the term.”
Lan Wangji kept his face blank, but he frowned internally, concerned. He knew the story had to be more complicated than that. Among other things, Wei Wuxian hadn’t needed to stop and think about his words like that for some time. He was stalling.
And he’d called the ghost Jiang Cheng.
Wen Yuan winced. “So… it was like that Red Army ghost. He wasn’t just him anymore, he was the core of a whole lot of anger that couldn’t go anywhere.”
Wei Wuxian nodded. “We were lucky the ring was removed from the seal. With a piece of the ghost separated from the abyss, that part of the ghost became… a little bit more of what he was. It was possible to reach him and liberate him.”
“And when that piece liberated… it was like the oracle bones. The rest of him went with, and that took the core out of the abyss?” Wen Yuan asked.
“Pretty much,” Wei Wuxian agreed, and grinned wryly. “Really… as liberations go, that was a remarkably simple one.”
“…because my grandfather was stupid enough to go carrying a piece of the ghost around with him,” Jin Ling said bitterly, fidgeting with something under the table. Then, more hesitantly, he added, “So… all the stuff he was doing. Was that… was that just the ghost?”
“I mean… must’ve been, right?” Lan Jingyi insisted. “Some of the stuff he was doing… it just didn’t make sense! It was like he thought he could just… go out and do whatever he wanted and drag people off and no one would say boo!”
“It was likely both,” Wei Wuxian said, surprisingly gently. “The longer Jin Guangshan carried the ring, the more the lines between him and the ghost would have blurred. You saw it, didn’t you? When he came out, he acted as Jin Guangshan, even if his judgement was off.”
“And he had that ring for a year,” Wen Yuan said with a wince.
“Wonder how Jin Guangshan got it in the first place, though,” Lan Jingyi mused. “You think he got too close and it kinda… One Ring of Doom’d him into picking it up?” A second later he blanched, mouth snapping closed as his eyes darted towards Jin Ling.
Jin Ling snorted. “Please. It wouldn’t have needed to. He saw something rare and valuable and decided that it was his because he wanted it.” He crossed his arms, rolling his eyes – a disdainful demeanor that would have been much more convincing if not for the way his shoulders remained hunched. “He did stuff like that all the time. I think he got a kick out of it. Heck, this past year he’s been obsessed with some crazy genealogical thing, that’s why he bought the property in Wuhan, nevermind that no one cares anymore who you were related to three hundred years ago…”
Lan Wangji blinked, suddenly distracted. Jin Ling was clutching the item he’d been fidgeting with in one hand. Seen up close, it was a silver ball with a tassel of purple silk, not unlike…
Wen Yuan made a startled sound, leaning in for a closer look. “That looks like a clarity bell!”
“So it does,” Wei Wuxian murmured, face strangely still. He held out a hand. “May I?”
Surprisingly hesitant, Jin Ling handed it over, even as he said, “It’s just some old charm.”
Wei Wuxian hummed, turning the ball around in his fingers. “Jin Ling. Did your grandfather give this to you, or was it the ghost?”
Jin Ling’s eyes widened. “He said something about it being a family heirloom.” He blanched. “But he only gave it to me after he started wearing the ring…”
“Oh shoot. It’s not cursed too, is it?” Lan Jingyi demanded, sitting bolt upright.
Wei Wuxian laughed. “No, it’s not cursed. Wen Yuan is right – it is a Jiang clarity bell. It belonged to Jiang Yanli, once.”
Oh.
Jin Ling blinked. “Is that… someone you knew?” he asked, a hint of something that sounded like tentative hope slipping into his voice.
Wei Wuxian smiled. “She was my shijie,” he said, and the warmth in his voice said more than an entire treatise could – as well as doing things to Lan Wangji’s heart.
“The one who gave you the comb?” Lan Jingyi asked eagerly – then turned red, obviously realizing that he’d basically just admitted to eavesdropping on their conversation the other night.
Wei Wuxian gave him a toothy grin that said he had absolutely noticed the slip. “The same,” he confirmed, and handed the clarity bell back to Jin Ling. “You might like to know… an interesting thing about ghosts is, they can sense when people are related. If that ghost gave this to you… Jiang Yanli was his sister.”
Ah. Lan Wangji released a slow breath at the indirect confirmation of his suspicions. That had been the ghost of Jiang Wanyin.
Wen Yuan’s eyes were huge. “Wait. So if he told Jin Ling that it was an heirloom, and it belonged to Jiang Yanli… Does that mean Jin Ling is her descendant?”
Jin Ling stared at the bell for a long minute, a whole series of complicated expressions flickering across his face, too fast to read. Then his shoulders slumped. “Great. So not only do I have Jin Guangshan for a grandfather and Meng Yao for an uncle, but I’m also stuck with a scary angry ancient ghost that tried to kill us for a who-knows-how-many-greats uncle. Why does my family tree suck so much?!”
Wei Wuxian huffed. “Shijie was one of the best people in the world, I’ll have you know!”
Lan Jingyi blinked. “Um. Just gonna throw this out there, but… wouldn’t that mean Wei Wuxian’s also your who-knows-how-many-greats uncle?”
Jin Ling opened his mouth to respond, and then froze in his seat, eyes wide.
Wei Wuxian grinned. “Maybe not by blood. But… Shijie did claim me as family once. And… I’m glad to know her children survived.”
Jin Ling closed his mouth, swallowing hard. “Even when that means Jin Guangshan was her descendant, too?”
“Eh.” Wei Wuxian waved a dismissive hand. “I’ll blame him on the Peaco*ck.” Grinning, he reached out and ruffled Jin Ling’s hair. “Now, as your honorary uncle: have Wen Yuan show you how to do a cleansing meditation. That was a lot of resentful energy. Better to clear it off now than deal with nightmares later.”
Lan Jingyi made a dismayed sound and scrambled to his feet. “Okay, I want in on that. Last night was nightmare fuel on its own, I don’t want sticky ghost goo energy giving my brain ideas!”
That seemed to be taken as a signal. Getting up, Wen Yuan started chivvying his friends in the direction of the room they’d claimed. Ostensibly because it had enough beds for all of them, but Lan Wangji had a sneaking suspicion that Wen Yuan was going to borrow Wei Wuxian’s tactics and build a blanket fort for them to all pile into together.
Assuming that they slept at all. He hoped they would at least try. It had been a very long day for all of them. Nightmares or no, they needed to rest.
Lan Wangji stepped over to the table, wrapping up and stowing away everything that looked intact enough to serve as sustenance for later; Madam Bao had assured him that she would be happy to cover any reasonable expenses until they could access their own funds again, but he did not want to abuse her generosity by being wasteful. Wei Wuxian helped himself to the bits and crumbs that were too scant to be worth saving as Lan Wangji tidied up, seemingly content to simply watch quietly.
Satisfied that the common area was in good order, Lan Wangji turned to him. “I would appreciate it if you would check me as well.” He didn’t hurt, exactly, but he’d been feeling… not off, but something like it, ever since they had boarded the bus and the last of the adrenaline-fueled narrow focus on survival had finally ebbed. He felt… too tired to move, and yet it seemed almost at a remove, as if he could simply will it away if he chose. The crash, he had expected. The second part… less so.
Wei Wuxian’s smile widened with mischief, and Lan Wangji knew what was coming well before the man fluttered his eyes and pretended to clutch at his chest. “Lan Zhan! How forward!” he cried, mock-scandalized. And then cackled cheerfully when Lan Wangji gave him a deadpan look, well aware that there was nothing forward or scandalous about such a request. But Wei Wuxian nodded, waving for Lan Wangji to lead the way through the door of the room they had claimed.
Although not without a moment of consternation on Lan Wangji’s part, because he had not quite considered the implications of the fact that this was meant to be a family suite. Hence the multiple room beds in the room for the children… and one bed in the master bedroom for the parents.
Although on second glance, the bed was… ridiculously oversized, and Lan Wangji couldn’t help thinking that their modest setup in the Jingshi, two separate beds separated by a privacy screen, was vastly more intimate than this monstrosity. He very much was looking forward to their return home.
Although he couldn’t help the fond amusem*nt when Wei Wuxian gaped at the bed, poked it curiously, and promptly did a belly flop just to laugh at the way he bounced. “Lan Zhan, did they mistake you for an emperor? Look at this thing! It’s bigger than your bedroom!”
“I suspect an emperor’s bed would be more modest,” Lan Wangji said dryly.
“Likely!” Wei Wuxian rolled over, arms and legs spread out in a vain attempt to reach the corners. “What are we even supposed to do with all this?”
“Sleep,” Lan Wangji deadpanned. And stuffed the suggestions for other potential activities into a box in the back of his mind and sat on them. Even if such a proposition would not be highly inappropriate, he didn’t have the energy for such activities right now. Nor any inclination to pursue them when there were children in the next room!
Wei Wuxian laughed, kicking his legs up and using the momentum to bounce himself off the mattress and up to a seated position. Holding his hand out to Lan Wangji, he wiggled his fingers expectantly.
Unfortunately, the room didn’t have any nearby chairs, and the ones it did have were too heavy to move easily and much lower than the height of the bed. So Lan Wangji sat on the edge of the mattress instead – feeling absurdly like an awkward teenager – and let Wei Wuxian take his wrist. Resting his fingers over the pulse point, Wei Wuxian closed his eyes for a moment—
And then he smirked.
Lan Wangji eyed him warily. That didn’t seem to be a bad sort of smirk, but given the man’s mercurial sense of humor, he felt some caution was justified. “Wei Ying?”
Still smirking, Wei Wuxian patted his hand. “Congratulations. Your jindan has formed.”
Lan Wangji froze. His first, wild thought was that it was a joke – but this was not something that Wei Wuxian would joke about.
But… how?! Forming a golden core was supposed to take years of dedicated effort and training – not two months!
Wei Wuxian chuckled. “In a way, you were preparing yourself for it before we ever met!” he explained, obviously having anticipated Lan Wangji’s confusion. “Your studies, your Tai Chi, your meditation… Your meridians were strong already. What we’ve been doing was mostly building the foundation and teaching you how to gather your qi. And then… you were meditating in the helicopter, weren’t you?”
Lan Wangji blinked. “I was,” he admitted. As much for something to do and to keep himself ready to respond at any moment, but…
Wei Wuxian nodded. “That happens sometimes. Stress can focus your qi, so if you are ready for the next step but not quite there yet…” He grinned. “You were almost there. And then, on the helicopter, we were moving with the pull of the formation, so it wasn’t interfering anymore. It was just enough.” His eyes were sparkling. “It’s an itty bitty thing. Just a seed. But it’s there.”
Lan Wangji rested a hand over his third dantian. “I… was not sure if it was actually possible,” he admitted. “The lore that survived claimed that it wasn’t, if you only began as an adult.”
Wei Wuxian snorted. “Oh, the sects said that, too.”
Lan Wangji blinked, then frowned at him. “You said…”
“Ah!” Wei Wuxian raised a finger. “Think about it, Lan Zhan! If grown adults couldn’t form a core, then we never would have learned that core formation was possible – you wouldn’t have children training themselves that way!”
Lan Wangji paused to consider that. “But if it is possible…”
Wei Wuxian smiled wryly. “Well. Once the sects were led by clans, most cultivators did start as children. And it is easier as a child. If only because you have no other responsibilities!”
Ah. “But if you were accepted into a sect as an adult, or even an older teenager… it would be because you proved yourself useful to the clan. And you would be expected to continue being useful. You wouldn’t have the freedom to dedicate yourself to cultivation alone.”
Doubtless there was a concrete difference if you began early, while the body was still developing – just as there was for any kind of athlete. But… given that Wei Wuxian had admitted that he could use cultivation to enhance his language acquisition, it was entirely possible that similar skills could be applied to core formation itself.
Even for language learning – yes, there was a critical period for language acquisition in early childhood. But the limits of adult language acquisition, while real, tended to be exaggerated by situational factors like a lack of immersion or artificial learning environments.
“Is that how I was able to summon Bichen?” he asked, fighting the urge to flex his hand. He could still feel the phantom weight of the hilt pressing against his fingers.
Wei Wuxian hummed thoughtfully, tapping his chin. “It definitely helped,” he agreed. “I don’t think you could have pulled that off without it! But…” He pursed his lips. “May I look at Bichen again?”
Lan Wangji blinked, but nodded. Standing, he went to the dresser where he had stowed the few things they had been able to salvage from the helicopter. It wasn’t much. They themselves had been taken with only what they’d been wearing, and as previously noted, their cellphones had been confiscated and lost. His laptop, unfortunately, was a loss as well; he’d spotted it lying underneath the smoldering remains of the helicopter, thoroughly shattered by the impact. It was possible that a skilled technician might have been able to salvage the data, but he’d been disinclined to risk electrical shocks and who knew what sort of toxic fumes trying to retrieve it. Fortunately, he’d been in the habit of creating backups regularly, so the only data he’d lost was from the previous day. It was fortunate that Meng Yao had been in such a hurry; it didn’t seem like he’d bothered to take Lan Wangji’s handwritten notes.
(He’d already claimed the hotel’s complimentary notepad to write up his account of the past twelve hours to add to those notes.)
Suibian’s scabbard, unfortunately, had been lost, and Lan Wangji was not looking forward to the outcry and recriminations that would follow when word of that reached certain ears. He suspected that it had fallen into the lake when they’d been thrown out of the helicopter, in which case it might be retrievable… but who knew what the bed of the reservoir looked like now, after the Xuanwu’s activity. And demise.
Granted, that wasn’t the only thing likely to raise a hue and cry, Lan Wangji thought darkly, eyeing the seemingly innocent piece of worked silver lying in the drawer with their other salvaged items. They probably shouldn’t have taken the Three Gorges Ring with them when they’d left the scene… but in their defense, Jin Ling had been so deeply in shock that he hadn’t even realized he was still clutching it in his fist until they were almost halfway to town.
He’d very nearly flung it out the window the moment he realized what he was holding, and part of Lan Wangji wished that he had. But it was an important artifact… and, frankly, while Wei Wuxian claimed that the ghost had passed on and the ring was no danger anymore, Lan Wangji had to admit that he felt better knowing that their only living expert on ghosts and curses was keeping an eye on it. Just in case.
Although… when the ring had been on Jin Guangshan’s hand, it had gleamed brilliantly, beyond what he might expect from mere polished silver. But in the time between then and when Jin Ling had remembered what he was holding, the silver had tarnished to black. Far too fast for any natural process… which made him tentatively hopeful that Wei Wuxian was correct.
Still, he very deliberately avoided making any contact with it as he lifted Bichen out of the drawer and carried it over to the coffee table occupying the other end of the room.
Wei Wuxian met him there, accepting the sword gently with both hands when Lan Wangji offered it. He hefted it lightly for a moment, face thoughtful as though he was weighing more than the physical object.
Then he grinned.
“I thought as much,” he chuckled. “I told you, Lan Yi was stubborn. And she loved her clan.”
Lan Wangji hesitated. “You mean… a remnant of her may have lingered. And chose to help?”
Wei Wuxian frowned slightly. “More… I mentioned that spiritual weapons bond with their wielder. They pick up… I’m not sure you could call it a personality – it’s not like they think exactly. But they tend to become like their wielder. You’re a young Lan cultivator with a newly formed core, you were in danger…” He shrugged. “If a sword can make it so that no one but their wielder can use them, why not make it easier as well?” Then he grinned. “I did say Lan Yi would have liked you!”
Hm. Lan Wangji personally thought that the danger to Wei Wuxian had probably played a role as well. Although if so, he certainly didn’t disapprove of Lan Yi’s priorities.
But he wasn’t going to debate it. Not when he’d been offered a perfect opportunity to address the topic that had been eating away at him since the sword from the reservoir had crumbled.
“Bichen is not the only remnant of those you once knew that was in play last night,” he observed.
For a moment, Wei Wuxian’s face went tellingly blank. Then he huffed a sigh, shaking his head. “Ah! I should have expected you to notice that.” His shoulders slumped slightly, betraying the weariness behind his usual cheer. “Yes. The ghost was Jiang Cheng.”
Lan Wangji waited, trying to project quiet, undemanding interest, as if this were nothing more than another afternoon conversation about the history of the sects. Although he made no effort to retrieve the notepad and pen from the small desk; this was too personal for that.
Wei Wuxian smiled ruefully. “It seems that Jiang Cheng didn’t take my disappearance very well at all,” he said ruefully. “He took it even less well when the Jin sect leader admitted to sending assassins.” His lip quirked. “Which is at least one mystery solved!”
One mystery solved. As if the implications were simply irrelevant, as if they had no more meaning than simply filling in a minor gap in his memory.
“They’d already poisoned Jiang Cheng by then,” Wei Wuxian continued, and grimaced. “Telling him about what they did to me – well, what they thought they’d done! – was just… gloating.” He snorted, and shook a finger at Lan Wangji. “Let that be a lesson, Lan Zhan! Gloating at a defeated enemy is stupid. Don’t do it.”
Lan Wangji could fill in the rest of the story easily enough. He was well versed in the psychology of displacement anger – having been prone to it himself when he was younger and less settled in himself. It was not hard to picture that seething resentment only becoming stronger despite, because of, the fact that it had proven unfounded.
And the thing about resentment and rage and hate was, they weren’t diffused by the addition of a new target. They would just expand to fill the available space.
He wondered if the Jin sect leader had survived the choice to gloat. He suspected not. Just as he also suspected that it hadn’t been nearly enough to appease the ghost. Nothing ever was, when the resentment was only ever a mask for something else.
Wei Wuxian tilted his head. “Although… I wonder if they meant for him to become a ghost.”
Lan Wangji blinked, and then considered that. “You said once that the sects would not accept the Jin as leaders without a threat to force them to unify again. You think they were attempting to engineer such a threat?”
“It’s possible. Although if they were, it backfired rather badly!” Wei Wuxian smiled wryly. “So in the end, it was a ghost who brought the Chen down – or rather, the Jin, and the other sects with them. And when they used my flag formation to trap him…”
“The side effects meant that the survivors were unable to train new cultivators to recover from their losses,” Lan Wangji concluded quietly.
It seemed… almost too pat. Too neat. But that was with the benefit of hindsight. And… how many other historical miracles and catastrophes had come about in a similar manner – a perfect storm of timing and personalities and circ*mstances that seemed vanishingly improbable from a historical perspective?
He let out a slow breath and looked at Wei Wuxian. “That must be hard for you,” he said. “To learn that your companion and fellow cultivator became such a destructive ghost.”
To his surprise, Wei Wuxian laughed a little, although there wasn’t much humor in it. “Hard? Maybe,” he said. “Really, the hard part is that it’s so easy to believe. The seeds were always there.”
Lan Wangji hesitated. “I know your relationship with him was complicated,” he said carefully. Wei Wuxian had never said as much in so many words, but Lan Wangji had been able to read it in the gaps of how he said things. And the things he hadn’t said.
Wei Wuxian pouted at him. “Lan Zhan! Gossip was against the Lan sect rules, you know! Are you going to be a rebel, just because you were born fifteen hundred years late?”
Lan Wangji waited patiently. Under normal circ*mstances, he would have enjoyed the invitation to play verbally – and, perhaps, delighted in the implication that Wei Wuxian would have liked to have known him before. But he had learned to recognize deflection when he heard it.
He wouldn’t push. But he didn’t want to let himself be sidetracked from something so important. So he waited. If Wei Wuxian truly didn’t wish to speak, he wouldn’t.
Sometimes he wondered where the man had learned this habit of… testing, of always offering people an out rather than truly hearing his thoughts.
Because after only a few moments of expectant quiet, Wei Wuxian huffed, one corner of his mouth quirking in a wry smile. Handing Bichen back to Lan Wangji, he turned and walked over to the window.
“Jiang Cheng’s sword was called Sandu,” he said.
Lan Wangji considered that as he set Bichen down on the coffee table, taking care to avoid scratching the surface. It gave him time to turn over the implications of those words in his mind.
“The three poisons of Buddhism. Expressing the intent to master the three poisons as he mastered the sword,” he concluded. “But if he became an angry ghost… ultimately, the poisons mastered him.”
Wei Wuxian smiled crookedly. “Better maybe to say that rather than mastering them, he wielded them. During the war… his injury meant that he couldn’t wield Sandu, but he always carried it with him. People took to calling him Sandu Shengshou.”
Implying he’d mastered the poisons as one might master a skill. Probably not the form of mastery that the one who had named the sword had been thinking of.
Wei Wuxian sighed, leaning against the edge of the window as he looked out. The sun was long risen by now, painting the cityscape of Sandouping with warm morning light and catching in the light gauzy privacy curtains to create a touch of glow, offset by the deep shadows of the blackout curtains that had been pushed to the side. “I think,” he said quietly, “that ultimately, the problem was that Jiang Cheng loved. But he wouldn’t admit that he loved… because nothing was ever enough to convince him that he was loved back.”
“There are no guarantees,” Lan Wangji murmured. “From the viewpoint of fear, none are strong enough. From the viewpoint of love, none are necessary.”
Wei Wuxian blinked, then chuckled ruefully. “Well. That does sum it up rather well!” He shook his head. “And… Jiang Cheng was always afraid. Of not being loved. Of not being enough.” He made a face. “It definitely didn’t help that every time Madam Yu said he was lacking, she compared him to me.”
Lan Wangji mentally winced. That was a combination that would poison even a healthy relationship, let alone one that was also tied up in rank and duties and issues of class and status. In fearing rejection and abandonment, Jiang Wanyin would have looked for the signs of it at every turn. And in looking for it, he would inevitably convince himself he had found it, and seek to punish it… and thus turn fear and insecurity into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
To have embedded that resentment into his sense of self, and then learn that Wei Wuxian’s disappearance had been due to the machinations of others, others Jiang Wanyin had worked with as peers…
Well. The cognitive dissonance alone would likely have been enough to trigger a mental breakdown.
“That was why you let the sword strike at you,” he realized. “His resentment was born of two conflicting impulses. You created a situation where they would turn against each other… and so doing, vanquish themselves.”
“…You make it sound so heroic, Lan Zhan.” Wei Wuxian’s lips twitched ruefully, and for a moment Lan Wangji could see the grief within that smile. An old grief – older, he thought, than the weeks that had passed since Wei Wuxian had learned that time had stolen away the world he’d known. “Really… I think, in the end, Jiang Cheng was always his own worst enemy. Becoming a ghost just made it more obvious.” He snorted. “Although Madam Yu certainly didn’t help!”
Lan Wangji hesitated. “Madam Yu?” he asked.
Wei Wuxian blinked, then chuckled. “Ah – Jiang Cheng’s mother.” Correctly interpreting Lan Wangji’s confusion, he explained, “She didn’t let us call her Madam Jiang, so.”
Lan Wangji blinked. “That is… an interesting choice. Was that common, for female cultivators?”
Wei Wuxian laughed. “Not at all! But no one wanted to argue with her about it.” He sighed, shaking his head. “She was… not a happy person. Sometimes it seemed like she didn’t want to be happy. It was more that she was simply angry – not at anything, just angry – and looking for excuses to take it out on people. Especially with Zidian!”
Lan Wangji felt his eyes widen involuntarily. “She drew her sword on her own disciples?” Although… rejecting the title of Madam Jiang might well imply she didn’t consider them her disciples.
Wei Wuxian blinked, then laughed sheepishly. “Ah, no. Zidian is Jiang Cheng’s ring.” He nodded towards the dresser. “It belonged to Madam Yu originally. It was a spiritual weapon; it became a whip when the wielder wanted it to.”
There was a great deal to unpack in that, but suddenly Lan Wangji could only stare at Wei Wuxian, remembering layer upon layer of laceration scars. “She used it on you.”
Wei Wuxian laughed. “Every chance she got! I spent hours kneeling in the ancestral shrine waiting for Jiang-zongzhu to let me out when she was done.”
Lan Wangji stared. “But why?”
Wei Wuxian blinked at him, amused. “Ah, Lan Zhan! You know me. I make trouble like I breathe. I don’t even remember half of the things I was punished for!” His smile softened then. “I told you. She didn’t need reasons. Just an excuse. That was all it really was.”
That was all? As if years of scars were simply nothing? “It was not right,” Lan Wangji said, voice tight. And yes, he was aware that attitudes towards corporal punishment had changed drastically in recent decades – had been caned himself once or twice as a child. But the casual violence that Wei Wuxian spoke of… even fifteen hundred years ago, it would have been a violation of proper conduct by a superior to a subordinate!
Wei Wuxian chuckled, warm and fond in a way that would make Lan Wangji blush if he weren’t so upset. “Ah, you really are too good, Lan Zhan.”
“Wei Ying.”
Wei Wuxian smiled at him. “I know it wasn’t right or fair. As I said: she only wanted a target. It didn’t matter what I did; if she was angry, she would make a reason to punish me, so why bother trying to appease her in the first place?” He chuckled. “But why trouble over it now? Life with the Jiang wasn’t bad! I had food, and friends, and a home. If there were problems – well, problems were everywhere!” He shrugged. “I told you – I learned a long time ago that there’s no point in clinging to the bad things that happen. You only harm yourself in the end. All that was fifteen hundred years ago! Why let it darken what I choose to do now?”
Lan Wangji deliberately unclenched the tightness in his shoulders, trying not to let it show. That… easy willingness to let bygones be bygones? He didn’t think he could be capable of that. He could barely wrap his mind around the concept.
But then again, he’d spent much of his life looking back on the past. And he certainly couldn’t say that he didn’t hold grudges.
But Wei Wuxian wasn’t him, and under the circ*mstances… Lan Wangji couldn’t blame him for wanting to focus on the future.
Which did raise a question. “Regarding that. Have you thought any more about what you would like to do?” he asked.
Wei Wuxian hummed. “Well. That array by the dam will definitely need cleaning up!” he said cheerfully. “It’s not an abyss anymore, at least, but it could easily become one again if something goes wrong. Dealing with that will keep me busy for a while!”
“Will you move to Hubei, then?” Lan Wangji asked, carefully neutral. He knew, intellectually, that Wei Wuxian could hardly stay hidden away in Cloud Recesses for the rest of his life. It was just… easier not to think about that, before.
But to his surprise, Wei Wuxian huffed, shaking a finger at him. “And leave you and all my cute little students? If I must be stuck with a ridiculous title like Laozu, I at least want to earn it properly!” He tilted his head. “And, really, until that flag array is taken care of, there aren’t many places I could train new cultivators. It will be a while before I’m ready to actually start a sect, anyway.”
Oh. Lan Wangji tried not to be too obvious in his relief. “I will be happy to assist you in that, if you like,” he offered.
Wei Wuxian pursed his lips, then suddenly shook his head. “You know,” he said, seeming to aim the comment not towards Lan Wangji directly but to the room as a whole, “I was going to be patient and wait and see… but all things considered, I don’t think people will give us that much time. So.”
Turning, he stepped forward, closing the distance between them too fast for Lan Wangji to draw back, so he was looking directly into Lan Wangji’s face.
“Lan Zhan, I like you,” he said pointedly.
Lan Wangji froze. Was he…
Wei Wuxian huffed. “This is very annoying, you know. I don’t actually know the proper words for saying this sort of thing now! And I know your courting customs are very different.”
Oh. He was.
Lan Wangji swallowed. “You said you were… open to having a cultivation partner. If it was a genuine partnership.”
Wei Wuxian grinned. “Is one being offered?”
Well. That… made him fairly certain that no, he was not misinterpreting.
Even so, he very carefully telegraphed every movement as he raised a hand, giving Wei Wuxian ample opportunity to move away.
He didn’t. In fact, he leaned in as Lan Wangji cupped his cheek, so close that despite their very similar heights, he had to look up just a little to meet Lan Wangji’s eyes. Which put him at a perfect angle for Lan Wangji to lean in and—
The door opened. “Professor Lan, do you know where…”
Lan Wangji could hear the double-take.
“Um. I’ll, um, just see myself out! Don’t mind me! Just – go do what you were doing!”
The door quickly closed again – but was not actually thick enough to muffle Wen Yuan’s breathless, “Jin Ling! Jingyi! It’s happening!”
…at which point Lan Wangji discovered that it was very difficult to kiss someone who was laughing so hard.
Sighing, he gave up the attempt and simply let Wei Wuxian lean against him, burying his face in Lan Wangji’s shoulder as he cackled gleefully. Which wasn’t at all bad, as consolation prizes went, but…
“I’m going to kill them,” he grumbled, only mostly for show.
Wei Wuxian snickered and straightened. “Ah, Lan Zhan! You’re not thinking long-term, here!”
Lan Wangji raised a pointedly dubious eyebrow. “Oh?
Wei Wuxian grinned. “Consider: we now have an excuse to embarrass them in public for the rest of their adult lives!”
Very well. That was acceptable.
For such a chaotic beginning, this was an excellent day.
OMAKE:
Lan Wangji: I wish I could observe Wei Wuxian’s reaction to the danmei fangirl squee…
Wei Wuxian: Hm. Lan Wangji’s ears are very red, but he doesn’t seem upset by what they’re implying. Data!
AUTHOR: I’m sorry, Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan! But the timeline switch means that for Jin Ling to be a descendant, Jin Guangshan would have to be as well! (Especially since his canon maternal family had to stay in Wei Wuxian’s backstory…)
And for your amusem*nt…
Me writing this: No, I can’t do purple lightning in the storm, even though it’s actually a real thing, that will give away the Jiang Cheng reveal!
Also me: the Jiang Cheng reveal is literally at the end of this scene, there’s really no point to playing coy anymore.
(One of the best bits of writing advice I’ve ever read: don’t worry too much about readers spotting the twist in advance. That’s literally what foreshadowing is for. Done right, you ideally want the reader to go “oh” right before the characters do… but if they see it coming sooner? That means they were paying attention! And you don’t lose the tension, because they’re still waiting for the shoe to drop for the characters. Win win!)
NOTES:
A hat tip to the readers who spotted the Jiang Cheng ghost twist coming!
Fun side note: in some cultures, strong emotions are seen as a form of possession, since they make you do things that you would not otherwise do if you were calmer. So by a certain perspective, Jin Guangshan causes Jiang Cheng to be “possessed” in canon by egging on his insecurities and pride to get him to act contrary to his best interests. Sooo… turnabout is fair play, I guess?
And another noncorporeal antagonist went and made himself central to my plot. Clearly I need to just give in and accept that this is a Thing with my plotbunnies…
One of my favorite bits of world-building in MDZS is that MXTX gave us a canonical justification for battles against powerful resentful entities to be accompanied by thunder and lightning. So I took advantage! Granted, the canon version is that storms happen when two powerful resentful beings clash (hence the storm in Yunping when Wen Ning is fighting Nie Mingjue’s corpse), but I figured that this was close enough. And honestly, I just think it’s way too much fun to leave out!
When I started this story, I had a vague idea in my head about “Yiling Laozu” taking the role of a kind of cultivator-style Merlin. (Which is one of the reasons why I never got very specific about the legends; trying to find any one definitive story about Merlin is an exercise in frustration!) And then, while reading April Hughes’s Worldly Saviors and Imperial Authority in Medieval Chinese Buddhism, I came across the account of Yang Jiang and Liu Zhixian. Historically, Liu Zhixian was a Buddhist nun who fostered Yang Jiang when he was young. Later, when Buddhism and Daoism were proscribed in the Northern Zhou by Yuwen Yong, Yang Jian and his wife took Liu Zhixian in and helped her continue practicing as a nun in secret – something that could have gotten them killed at the time. So for the purposes of this story – Yiling Laozu is remembered as a sage who helped train the future Emperor Wen, but the historical accounts conflated him with Liu Zhixian, one of Yang Jian’s advisors. (And yes, there’s a bit of gender flip thrown in.)
…and just a reminder that, as I said in the first chapter, this is not a reincarnation story. But since there’s no reason for Jin Ling to have anything to do with the name Rulan, and I wanted to establish that Jiang Yanli did have a son, I borrowed it for what is essentially a one-scene OC…
But regarding the whole Yiling Laozu thing… Ever since his “where are my rivers of blood?” harrumphing in the first chapter, I have always read Wei Wuxian’s internal voice as distinctly sardonic, especially when it comes to the whole Yiling Laozu thing. (And “Demon-Slaying Cave” is absolutely him making fun of the rumors!) So bunnies decided he should get a chance to snark for an audience, rather than just his internal dialogue!
And in this chapter, I finally sneak in a little bit of my “thumb-my-nose-at-cultivation-age-limits” agenda. Which, yes, I recognize is simply an inherent trope of the genre… but if you think about it, it’s also a very classist sort of thing, because it limits access to cultivation to the people who can afford to have their children dedicate all their time to cultivating!
(And isn’t it interesting that Lan Wangji, supposedly one of the best cultivators of his cohort, apparently has almost no responsibilities and can simply toss those responsibilities and go do secluded cultivation whenever he wants? After all, that’s what he does right before Wei Wuxian leaves Cloud Recesses. Despite supposedly being in charge of discipline.)
…though, honestly? Given how popular the old “regressed to a child!” trope is, I want to see a story where the characters use it as a hack to get around critical development period limitations…
So. Jiang Cheng.
Whoo boy…
Jiang Cheng’s appearance as a resentful ghost was one of the very earliest parts of the plot that I settled on for this story. It’s based primarily on two things. The first was simply the thought that the Jiang Cheng we meet on Mount Dafan – in fact, throughout nearly the entire main story of the novel – is ripe to become a genuinely terrifying angry ghost. The man is a mass of seething rage and resentment fueled by his own emotional contradictions and insecurities. He’s just still alive. In fact, that’s one of the themes in the novel: while everyone talks about the dangers of resentful energy, it’s the resentment of the living that’s doing the most damage.
The other is… well.
Jiang Cheng willfully makes things worse for Wei Wuxian by going a step beyond simply saying he’d defected from Yunmeng Jiang to declare him the enemy of the sects. He leads the first siege on the Burial Mounds. He blames Wei Wuxian for his parents and Jiang Yanli despite knowing perfectly well that Wei Wuxian was not responsible. In the novel, it’s solidly canon that he does take modao/guidao users (or, if we go with what Jin Ling says, people who remind him of Wei Wuxian) to Lotus Pier and tortures them (“beats them until they tell him what he wants to know” definitely qualifies for the term), given that the omniscient narrator goes into his head to show him thinking it; the account we’re given in Yunping implies he kills them. He also tortures Wei Wuxian in Qinghe; what he does with Fairy is no different than locking someone who is claustrophobic in a closet, or forcing someone afraid of heights to walk on a cliff. He physically attacks Wei Wuxian for trying to walk away from a nasty encounter in the shrine at Lotus Pier.
And when the incredibly people-savvy Jin Guangyao needs to get an edge over Jiang Cheng at the temple in Yunping, he feints, not at Jin Ling, but at Wei Wuxian.
And Jiang Cheng falls for it.
I read Jiang Cheng as an absolute mess of contradictory impulses driven by insecurity and a toxic concept of how love is supposed to work, competitiveness warring against actual care against the influence of a mother who treated him more as a proxy for herself than an individual, all of it wrapped up in impulsiveness and a habit of defaulting to rage and violence rather than risking the slightest vulnerability – a behavior pattern he got from his mother as well.
As a side note here: given that Jiang Cheng is such a polarizing character, I’m going to make the same request here that I did for Lan Xichen: no rants about Jiang Cheng and how he’s a horrible person in the comments, please… and also, please no essays about how really he actually cares so much.
He’s both.
I think that may be part of why he’s such a polarizing character. He is, inherently, contradictory… and because that’s messy, people tend to latch onto one side of his character and explain away or dismiss the other.
Personally, I think a good way to understand Jiang Cheng is his title – which is why I worked it into the story, despite the AU elements meaning that he was coreless. Jiang Cheng is someone who clings to his attachments, his hatreds, and most of all his illusions – the Three Poisons (Sandu) of Buddhism. And rather than mastering them by overcoming them, he wields them as weapons.
Especially illusions. Because to me, one of the key characteristics of Jiang Cheng is that he lies to himself. Time and again, he says or does whatever is emotionally satisfying in the moment. And then he clings to it, because to do otherwise is to admit that he was wrong, and his pride and insecurities won’t allow that.
Which can have devastating results.
When we see the sect leaders gather after Wei Wuxian rescues the Wens from the camp, Jiang Cheng actually does mention the debt he owes Wen Ning and Wen Qing… until Nie Mingjue mentions Yunmeng Jiang being destroyed again, and Jiang Cheng – who is already in a bad mood – starts seething. And then Jin Guangshan starts accusing Wei Wuxian of being disrespectful of Jiang Cheng, and by the time Jiang Cheng gets to the Burial Mounds, he’s in a fury. He’s already decided that he won’t help, because he’s busy being offended. At which point, when Wei Wuxian refuses to bow down to Jiang Cheng’s demands, he essentially responds with a metaphorical, “Fine! Don’t come crawling back to me! (I will force you to come crawling back!)”
And honestly, I think the reason that the rumor-mongering and whispers about respect and status are so effective ties into what might be the ultimate lie that Jiang Cheng tells himself, one that I think whetstonefires on Tumblr articulated the best: the relationship between Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian always existed in two registers. The first is the quasi-brotherly relationship. The second is that of lord and vassal.
Here’s the problem: of the two, the first is the one Jiang Cheng wants – needs, desperately. That’s the one that matters.
But his insecurity means that he only acknowledges the second.
Because that’s the relationship where he has all the power. He doesn’t have to make himself vulnerable by asking, he doesn’t have to reciprocate anything! Which is why he harps so much on debts – which only really comes up after Wei Wuxian goes to help the Wens. Debts mean he has control. Debts mean that Wei Wuxian owes him. Debts mean that Wei Wuxian has to stay as his vassal.
(Even if he has to lie to himself about the validity of those debts. And ignore his own.)
One of the really interesting ways to highlight this pattern is to look at what Wei Wuxian actually said in that famous promise, versus what Jiang Cheng claims that he said.
“In the future, you’ll be the sect leader, and I’ll be your subordinate, like your father and my father. So what if the GusuLan Sect has its Two Jades? The Yunmeng Jiang Sect will have its Two Prides! So, shut up. Who said that you don’t deserve to be the sect leader? Nobody can say this, even you can’t either. If you do you’re looking for a beating.” (ExR 56)
“Wei WuXian, who was the one who broke his promise and betrayed the Jiang Sect first? Tell me. That I’d be the sect leader and you’d be my subordinate, that you’d help me your whole life, that so long as the GusuLan Sect had its Two Jades, the YunmengJiang Sect would have its Two Prides, that you’d never betray me or betray the Jiang Sect—who was the one that said these?! I’m asking you—who was the one that said all these?! Did you eat all your f*cking words?!” (ExR 102)
Jiang Cheng took a promise of brotherhood, and turned it into one of unilateral service.
(And this is why learning about the golden core is so devastating. From a lord and vassal perspective, that is the ultimate act of loyalty. There is no debt that Jiang Cheng can claim which can top it. He can’t force Wei Wuxian back into the role of vassal.)
And… honestly? I think that one-sided interpretation of the promise can be traced all the way back to Jiang Cheng’s unhealthy relationship with loving and being loved, which goes all the way back to Madam Yu constantly hammering him with the idea that his father doesn’t love him, something she was doing before Wei Wuxian ever arrived at Lotus Pier. So he easily believes people will be disloyal, and resorts to force to keep them.
And most of all, the fact that Madam Yu imparted to Jiang Cheng an absolutely toxic model of what love is supposed to look like.
If they don’t agree with you, if they say you are wrong, they don’t love you! (Madam Yu swooping in when Jiang Fengmian attempts to impart a lesson to Jiang Cheng.) If they care about anyone else, they don’t care about you! (Madam Yu’s twisting of any positive attention shown to Wei Wuxian.) If you do things for them, it demeans you! (Madam Yu attacking Jiang Yanli for gestures like peeling seeds for her family.)
And most poisonous of all?
Your father doesn’t love you because you’re my son!
Which means it’s not about his actions, it’s about who he is, and there’s nothing he can do about that, it’s not his fault… And so he never learns to temper his actions or check his habit of lashing out, verbally or physically, at whatever target is easiest. After all, that’s also a behavior his mother patterned for him, and he’s her son… and we’re back to FLEAs.
Honestly? I think that there’s a part of Jiang Cheng that is still a small child throwing tantrums, because Madam Yu never allowed him to have what he desperately needed: his father’s love, and someone to sit him in a corner and make him think about what he did.
Which is a real problem when that small child is the driving force behind a fully grown man with the power of noble status and a sect and access to lethal weapons and nothing to check his behavior.
As I said in an earlier chapter: does he love Wei Wuxian? I think he does. And they would both have been better off if he didn’t.
Honestly, I do think there’s hope for Jiang Cheng at the end… but losing Wei Wuxian was a necessary step. Because behavior patterns like that don’t change on their own. It’s only after Jin Guangyao rubs Jiang Cheng’s culpability in what happened to Wei Wuxian in his face that Jiang Cheng can see that he’s repeating the pattern with Jin Ling, and stop himself.
This, by the way, is why I can’t agree with people who say that Wei Wuxian telling Jiang Cheng about the core transfer would have fixed things. Because ultimately, Wei Wuxian’s lack of a core and the guidao had nothing to do with the conflict that ultimately divided them. Nor would Wei Wuxian coming back have done more than put a patch on it. Jiang Cheng’s insecurities still would have risen up, again and again, because fundamentally they have nothing to do with Wei Wuxian and his actions. Their roots are solidly in Jiang Cheng’s demons.
It only works in this story because Jiang Cheng is a ghost. Ghosts only need to be appeased once.
But I think the tragedy of Jiang Cheng is, it didn’t have to be that way. He could have been better. The seeds were there. He cared.
He pushed hard enough to make the journey from Mount Muxi to Lotus Pier and back in seven days, rather than the ten it should have taken. He tried to stop Madam Yu when he thought she was going to cut Wei Wuxian’s hand off – and while he failed, the simple fact that he tried is genuinely significant when you consider how much control she has over him in every other scene. When he sees Wei Wuxian in danger, he sacrifices himself to lead them away.
And, bluntly, I don’t think it matters if he didn’t think they would actually do anything to him or not. Honestly, I don’t think he thought at all. He saw the danger, and acted. That was a “who you are in the dark” moment.
Unfortunately, in the end (and rather the reverse of the usual way the trope plays out), it’s who Jiang Cheng becomes when he thinks people are watching that wins out.
The line Lan Wangji quotes above comes from Emmanuel Teney: There are no guarantees. From the viewpoint of fear, none are strong enough. From the viewpoint of love, none are necessary.
In the end, Jiang Cheng’s fear (his insecurities, his anger, his need to blame) was stronger than his love.
And that turns love into poison.
